they're isolated from real communities, working service jobs they hate while barely making ends meat, and are living w/ unchecked personal/mental health problems If you’re not familiar with Steak-Umm or their social presence (as I admittedly wasn’t before the viral tweet), the Philadelphia-based company sells frozen beef sheets most often used for cheesesteaks. But what made the account successful initially was that we were really just breaking down the fourth wall a little bit further than a lot other brands. The one word that we always come back to when we’re talking about the voice is “community.” We want to be a brand that is transparent enough to acknowledge what it is and that it’s selling a product, but at the same time, we want to be recognized as the people behind the brand. [We’re] able to directly attribute that to social media because we weren’t running any other ads or campaigns at the time. We all know that brands get a lot of heat from users on social media. We’ve gotten a lot of younger people messaging us their personal problems, and in most cases, we were pretty up-front by saying, “You need to seek help from a professional or a loved one if this is a persistent issue.” At this point, we’ve gotten at least a few hundred. I’ve never seen anything like that from a branded account before. We started to develop this whole ethos around the Steak-Umm Bless idea, once that started to flesh itself out, we realized that there was a huge space on Twitter where there’s just so much negativity and polarization. Do you hope to see more brands take that sort of social commentary approach, or do you like being unique in that way? But at the same time, it comes with this whole gray area where what we’re doing works for the people who know the brand, but for people who aren’t as familiar with the brand, it can come off totally manipulative.
It’s not every day a branded tweet goes viral. Even rarer is the viral tweet coming from a frozen meat company. Rarer still is the viral tweet blossoming into a tweet-thread of social commentary, but that’s exactly what Steak-Umm posted just a few weeks ago. So far, it seems to have worked out.
why are so many young people flocking to brands on social media for love, guidance, and attention? I’ll tell you why. they’re isolated from real communities, working service jobs they hate while barely making ends meat, and are living w/ unchecked personal/mental health problems
If you’re not familiar with Steak-Umm or their social presence (as I admittedly wasn’t before the viral tweet), the Philadelphia-based company sells frozen beef sheets most often used for cheesesteaks. Upon first glance, Steak-Umm’s oddball tweet humor might remind you of Wendy’s or MoonPie, but a bit of scrolling proves that Steak-Umm stretches beyond humor to tweet deep, often sad, and even poetic content.
I spoke with Nathan Allebach, the brand’s social media manager, to learn more about how social media increased sales, what led to the viral Twitter thread, and why Steak-Umm the brand might have presidential aspirations.
What were you doing before Steak-Umm and what made you want to come on board?
Prior to running the Steak-Umm account, I hadn’t done any community management at that level. We had been doing social calendars for Steak-Umm and their sister companies, but last summer we ran up Steak-Umm’s ad budget in the spring and didn’t have anything going on. I pitched it to the marketing department by saying, “Hey, we’re in a little bit of a lull period, so what do you think about me just messing around on our inactive Twitter account and seeing if we can generate any kind of buzz.” So it actually started as just us messing around and experimenting, then it really took off.
Were you influenced by Wendy’s and Denny’s and brands that have made this type of irreverent humor popular on Twitter?
Prior to really getting involved on Twitter, I wasn’t all that aware of a lot of these other brands like Wendy’s. I came to have a high, high reverence for Wendy’s, MoonPie, and Denny’s once I started getting more involved, and I definitely started to take note and learn from the type of content they would put out and the voices they were developing.
But what made the account successful initially was that we were really just breaking down the fourth wall a little bit further than a lot other brands. We tried to make it as real and as close to a one-to-one human interaction as we could. I think that’s what drove the initial success. Then a lot of the strategy, if you want to call it that, came once we got footing and an understanding of how brand Twitter operates.
Do you have a mission statement for the Steak-Umm social voice?
The one word that we always come back to when we’re talking about the voice is “community.” We want to be a brand that is transparent enough to acknowledge what it is and that it’s selling a product, but at the same time, we want to be recognized as the people behind the brand. The mission is to generate community, make memes, and sell frozen beef sheets.
What sort of guidelines do you have for the account? Is there anything you’re not allowed to post or topics that you try to stay away from?
There are obvious brand guidelines, like ‘Don’t be politically polarizing’, and we’re not using any foul language or overt attacks on anyone’s character. But generally speaking, it’s probably about as free as someone could be behind a brand account.
There were definitely some growing pains in the first couple of months of figuring out the question of “Is this okay to post?” We learned along the way, but I think at this point, we’re pretty set with what we’re doing.
ATTN Steak-Umm cult followers
here are the guidelines to our new world order:– bless everyone even our idiot college intern steve
– no hot pockets
– saying “is it steak? umm..” may land you in the dungeon
– beef memes are currency
– RT everything so I can keep my job
Have you found that having a humorous and approachable Twitter presence has increased Steak-Umm sales…
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